Monthly Archives: October 2007

Kids will be out in force tonight for the annual tradition of
Halloween trick-or-treating. But many areas in Kitsap and Mason
counties aren’t exactly conducive to your typical trick-or-treater,
so I asked some of our local law enforcement officials to explain
some safety tips for people out and about tonight.

It’s illegal in all 50 states, according to the federal
government. In just 12 states — including Washington — those who
can find a doctor who will “recommend” it can have it. But they’re
not told how to get it or who to get it from.

That’s the current world of marijuana as medicine. But the
Washington Department of Health hopes to make a vague law, passed
by the state’s voters in 1998, a little bit more lucid.

Here’s my question for you: How much pot should someone with
full legal clearance to use it be allowed to have?

It isn’t just law enforcement and the state’s prosecutors that
face challenges interpreting the state’s medicinal marijuana law —
one that’s ambiguous in its nature and has no federal validity.

A lawsuit filed in Kitsap County Superior Court in February
alleges a Kitsap woman was fired for failing a drug test — despite
her disclosure to the company that she was a legal medical
marijuana user under state law.

We received the below letter a few weeks back from an inmate
named Elizabeth Virginia Mathiesen at the Kitsap County jail. It
actually ran as a letter to the editor, but it includes a paragraph
at the bottom I wanted to share on this blog.

Her letter shares her thoughts about corrections officers at the
jail, and that she believes they do good work. But at the end of
her letter is a jail poem-of-sorts.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard some of these rhymes from
inmates at the county jail. But I thought Mathiesen’s take on it is
particularly eloquent:

The Kitsap County Courthouse had a busy Columbus Day, especially
at the superior court arraignment calendar. That’s where defendants
are brought before a judge to hear their charges for the first
time.

Typically, corrections officers at the Kitsap
County jail after a weekend bring about eight to 10 inmates,
handcuffed together, into superior courtroom 212 and have them sit
in the jury box until it’s their turn to approach the bench.

On Monday, three sets of inmates were brought up from the jail,
a larger-than-average group by most standards. And much of the
crime was domestic violence.

The man,
Darrin D. Maiden, is alleged to have shot a 27-year-old woman
on Montgomery Avenue and fled the scene Tuesday afternoon. He has
yet to be caught.

However, when I received the court documents charging Maiden
from the Kitsap County Clerk’s Office, a warrant for attempted
murder — despite the cops’ request for that charge in court
documents — was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was for
first-degree assault.

Five burglaries in the past week in the Lemolo Shore area of
North Kitsap and the Central Kitsap area around Central Valley Road
may not be just a coincidence.

Then again, they could be.

It is too early to tell, Kitsap County Sheriff’s spokesman Scott
Wilson told me yesterday. But he said his office isn’t ruling out
the possibility that those responsible are a group of thieves that
could include an experienced burglar (perhaps one recently released
from prison).

Here’s a summary of the five burglaries, according to sheriff’s
office reports: